


Between Midnights

by vuas



Category: Shadow and Bone (TV), The Grisha Trilogy - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Choking, Cunnilingus, Dark Alina if you squint, Dirty Talk, Dubious verbal consent in one scene but it’s actually consensual?, F/M, Hate Sex, Light Dom/sub, Marriage, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, alina keeps her powers because I said so, alina pretends it’s dubcon and it isnt, how 2 be strong when ur husband is a hot evil villain, no beta we die like men, vague arranged marriage AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:29:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28697724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vuas/pseuds/vuas
Summary: “You’re my wife, my sun summoner,” he continues undeterred, hot breath fanning over her neck. “You’re mine. I can do whatever I please with you. Why shouldn’t I kiss you?”
Relationships: The Darkling | Aleksander Morozova/Alina Starkov
Comments: 47
Kudos: 419





	Between Midnights

**Author's Note:**

> Now edited with more war room smut 
> 
> AU where she joins him at the end of s&s I guess!!!!!!

A memory she tells him:

She is eight, a few months after the Grisha examination—the one where she had unknowingly buried part of herself to stay sane. Her foolish gamble against nature has made her sick, nearly bed-ridden. Her skinny limbs are never warm, her belly never full. The nurses talk quietly where they think she can’t overhear; they don’t expect her to last to spring.

(She could be imagining it. He could be acting. But the Darkling’s brow knits with concern all the same as she recounts the way her childhood had been split in two; the before, the after, the damage done.)

It’s November, and Alina wakes in the middle of the night, pulling off her heavy quilt to peer out the window; a purple-blue light blankets the world outside, everything turned quiet and pure with the first winter snow. It calls to her, this empty landscape with it’s birch trees and frigid air. Alina, despite her strange illness, miraculously finds the strength to answer.

She wakes no one as she pulls on her boots and coat, having learned her lesson about getting caught out of bed at the other end of Ana Kuya’s switch. The stairs hear her silent prayer; there’s not even a creak as she hurries to the empty first floor and out onto the back porch of the orphanage.

Alina grins triumphant, settling on the back edge of the house to enjoy her view in solitude. Nighttime snow was always peculiar in that it hardly seemed like nighttime at all. The clouds are low, reflecting what must be the dim light of town on the horizon, casting a glow on the surrounding trees and fields. Her lungs fill with frosty, fresh air as she gazes at her little winter kingdom.

In the shadow of the wood, something watches back.

Alina blinks, squinting at the thick copse of trees—something weaves slowly, gracefully between them. The hair on the back of her neck stands up; her body recognizes something ancient at the edge of the dark.

It’s a stag. White as snow, it’s antlers large enough to frame the moon. 

Alina can’t recall how long she watched the creature—remembers only the way her lungs had burned as she held her breath, afraid to scare it off. The silence of the wilderness stretched for miles, pressing in on her and the beast, cradling them until their heartbeats intertwined.

She squints harder, until the trees dissolve and there’s only black, milky eyes on hers, an endless loop of understanding that transcends them both. _I know you. I know you. I can see. And you will too._

In the next moment, Alina wakes in bed with a gasp. Mal is cheery at her side with two bread rolls for breakfast—they scarf them down as she tells him all about the creature in the wood. The little tracker’s eyes light up with challenge—but eventually he giggles, wiggling his fingers at his ears in an approximation of antlers, telling her she should try a ghost story next.

Her young, sinking heart feels cold, even after he leaves and she dresses for the day. It’s true that she can’t explain or remember how she ended up back in bed, under the covers, or the lack of footprints on the fresh snow covering the back porch. Maybe Mal was right: it was only a dream, like so many others.

And yet, when she pulls on her boots, her toes meet the damp lining with a squelch of melted snow.

* * *

  
  


“Oh Alina,” he murmurs when she’s done, patronizing in a way that sours her mood. “You’ve never been on your own.”

Perhaps it was true; if she’d been more naive she’d think he was referring to Mal—but a more primal part acknowledged that the Darkling meant himself, body and soul. She’d been born for him; the light to his darkness. There would never be anyone else to choose. They were inevitable, made both equals and prisoners to the connection threaded between them by war and blood and understanding.

The lonely, orphan child inside of her wonders how something could be such a blessing and a curse.

* * *

He shakes his head, looking as exhausted as any immortal being might. “You trust them to do the right thing,” he flips to the next page of her trade proposal, eyes skimming her handwriting. “They’ll disappoint you, Alina.”

She resists the urge to stomp her feet. “Perhaps your old age has made you too cynical.” 

He snorts, which only serves to infuriate her, annoyance bubbling into rage; something she slides into easily these days, no doubt due to his influence. It bursts from her lips before she can stop it: “It’s not fair. Of course they’ll never change if you won’t let them!”

Her voice echoes off the walls of the vast library, the fire briefly rising in its grate with a roar, called to the thrum of power laced into her words. The sentence startles her to the bone—them, she’d said, drawing a sharp line between the Ravkan citizens and whatever she and the Darkling might be. Once, not long ago, she too had been a simple peasant girl destined for nothing in particular, living and dying in the fields of Ravka.

Horrified, she cannot remember exactly when she became something else.

* * *

“Was it lonely, before me?” Her finger traces an idle pattern across his bare chest. Alina knows there’s been other women, just as she’s loved another boy—though truthfully, it’s dim in comparison to how the Darkling makes her feel. Not better or worse or truer, but _saints_ , so much more vivid; their love—if you could call it that—an alive thing that seeps into the very walls of the palace. 

Yet he’s lived entire lifetimes without her; and Alina is naturally curious. “Could you feel something was missing?”

“When I was a young man, I think I had dared to hope. Like a ghost limb,” his hand flexes at her waist, almost protective, making sure she’s still beside him. “You were there and yet not, for centuries—I looked for you in every face,” he confesses, cold eyes finding hers in the silvery light of the moon. He has never looked so utterly human. “Nearly drove me mad.”

Alina can’t stop herself from freezing in his arms; she’d laugh if he was telling a joke. 

She gets the distinct feeling he’s not.

(A wistful, secret wonder is this; perhaps she could have saved more if she’d been born earlier, put an end to the spiral of his mind into darkness before it was too late, before he’d turned his back on his humanity. Their fates seem like cruelly misaligned floorboards in the house of Ravka, a foundation that cracked and swallowed everything whole.

Perhaps she could have even saved him.)

* * *

Their wedding portrait is a fine thing; gilded frame surrounding a bountiful region of Ravkan wilderness that if agricultural reports are to be believed, does not truly exist. The two likenesses are wild creatures too, albeit contained by heavy folds of formal kefta. An attempt was made to capture the low hum of Grisha power; Sankta Alina and the Darkling seem blurred at the edges, eyes distant. They look like monsters wearing human faces. 

The bride did not wear white.

Alina remembers very little of her wedding other than the acute paralysis of helplessness; that, and the image of her hand, pale and small, clasped in his as a ring was slid onto the appropriate finger at the direction of a court official—her new husband distrustful of the church and it’s priests. How brightly their new bond had sung when he’d touched her wrist to admire the gold band, the same as it did the first time she let her power escape in that dusty military tent, long ago. 

She remembers how hard she’d slammed the bedroom door in his face on their wedding night.

Alina had relented to protect her friends from execution—exchanging marriage and cooperation for their freedom. It was mercy. It was her who had to suffer. Who had to stay behind in the labyrinth of his terror and make sure the doors were locked tight enough that nobody else got in. 

But between the weeks or months or years—time eroded meaning when immortality trickled by—she’d been worn thin at the edges, falling into his bed, a wife in every sense of the word. To her irritation, this seemed to be the easiest part of marriage—pulling off her clothes and letting him press her open, vulnerable and warm. How soundly she slept on his chest, held in his arms as he stroked her bone-white hair.

_Like calls to like_ , he’d said, so long ago, and repeated often when her shoulders grew weary, as if to absolve her of the burden of betrayal—to Mal, to Nikolai, to Ravka. A kindness, in his own way. The only way he knew how.

A part of her insists that surely, not even a saint could be blamed for sins committed in the arms of the Darkling.

* * *

The first time is predictably, when they are in the midst of an argument. Alina points a finger in his face—the Darkling yanks her forward by her collar, brimming with fury—and suddenly they are very, very close and she can’t quite recall what the problem was. There is only the cool granite of his eyes, the stubble on his cheek, the near-permanent crease on his brow—a wrinkle that typically had something to do with her. 

They stand still for a beat, awash under this strange closeness, his fingers digging under the antler at her throat, stroking his first gift to her. A collar for a prisoner, a necklace for a queen. The expression on his handsome face bleeds between fond and infuriated.

He opens his mouth to say something—probably cutting and manipulative, but Alina is so tired. So she shuts him up the way servant girls wink about; after all, he may be the Darkling, but he is still a man.

She just doesn’t expect it to work quite so well.

The kiss she initiates quickly devolves into something greedy, as if he’s been pining for it; he practically snarls into her mouth, walking them until her back hits the wall. Hands find her waist—Alina has always been scrawny, so it’s not terribly taxing when he simply lifts until she’s pinned, palace crown moulding digging into her spine. It should hurt, but she’s distracted by the way he nips at her throat, bruised mouth gasping when his teeth scrape over a spot that makes her shudder.

Every brief moment they’ve touched before was only a whisper—the bond crows with delight at each new press of skin, vibrating true and free and powerful. Like the Cut, everywhere, all at once, unbridled light gleaming in her veins.

“We— _Aleksander_ —we should—“ she fumbles, weakly pulling at the fox-fur lining of his kefta. She’d thought using his name would knock some sense into that stubborn head of his, but instead he groans, pressing closer. “Say it again,” he pleads—Alina blinks in surprise; it might as well be the only time he’s ever truly begged her for anything in this long life.

“We don’t _do_ this,” she surges on, suppressing a shiver when his lips brush her ear. “Remember?”

“Why not?” 

An absurd bubble of laughter erupts from her lips. There’s an edge to his voice that makes it sound like he’s _pouting_.

“You’re my wife, my sun summoner,” he continues undeterred, hot breath fanning over her neck. “You’re mine. I can do whatever I please with you. Why shouldn’t I kiss you?”

“But we didn’t when we—we married,” her protest trails off, remembering the evening after the ceremony where he’d escorted her to her room, smug, punchable face elated with victory. Listening to his footsteps on the other side of her closed door grow distant as he walked away from harsh rejection.

“Yes, I distinctly recall you telling me where I could ‘stick it’ instead.”

“Well, you didn’t ask again,” she grumbles, thinking of all the late nights she’d spent covertly admiring his profile in the firelight as they spoke Grisha theory; how quickly she now flushed at the line of his shoulders from afar during training. Studiously concentrating on pastries during breakfast instead of his sleep-mussed hair. Ignoring the muscle of his arm when she was required to walk with him to the throne room, how thoughtfully his long legs slowed to match her shorter ones. The intimacy they’d developed in public was a thin veneer orchestrated for the people of Ravka, whom they agreed needed to think that the Sun Summoner and the Darkling worked in tandem. 

And yet, he’d been a little too true to her wedding-night request, never sparing her a second glance unless necessary. It was demoralizing, even though it was what she’d wanted.

“Ah,” he teases lightly, nosing at her jaw. “So Alina Starkov only needs to be asked twice? Noted.”

It’s almost painful how hard Alina rolls her eyes, hating the boyish sound of his laugh, like a thousand years have been erased in an instant, replaced with whatever he’d been before he became the Darkling. It dissolves her contempt like sugar under the tongue; sweet and smooth and instantaneous, as if it were never there at all.

“Perhaps you could take a night off from despising every moment I breathe,” he suggests, pressing another slow kiss at her pulse. “You can always be mad in the morning, darling.”

“Then approve the new treasury budget with my additions,” she stammers, thinking of schoolhouses prepped with books and paper and food, happy children, proud parents. Something bright to cling to—as if she wasn’t just giving herself away for nothing, despite her body’s urges to do exactly that. Urges that had her squirming against the hard line of his chest, one of his legs slotted between hers.

“For you, my Alina,” he presses a kiss to her forehead, a warmth in his voice that could only be a ruse skinned from a millennia of watching fools in love. “Of course.”

  
  


* * *

“You,” he says without looking up from his desk. “Are a distraction.”

“I thought you liked this dress,” she twirls in the gauzy fabric—white and pink, beaded with pearls, gold thread patterning a thousand suns along the hem. Fabric falls off her shoulders in great, wide sleeves. He’d had it made for a visit to the Ravkan Opera when a kefta wouldn’t do, and it was one of the finest things she owned—also one she’d been defiled in quite often. 

She is older now, despite her youthful face. There’s nothing like a pretty dress to make her feel girlish again.

“Precisely,” he dabs his pen in the inkwell, sparing her a glance, eyes trailing over the low neckline with heat. “Go sit. I’ll be done in a moment—“

It’s a bit of a gamble to believe the heavy skirt will fit between his lap and the desk, but Alina has luck on her side. She props herself on his thigh, looping one arm behind his neck, pressing the length of her upper body against his. He’s warm, and despite what most rumors say, she can feel a heart beating in his chest.

A forgotten pen clatters to the desk from his hand, rolling to the side.

In the next moment, the same hand is on the back of her neck, sliding up to the roots of her hair and closing into a fist, forcing an arc of her neck, a hiss from her mouth. “Alina,” he holds her still, kissing her cheek. “You need only ask.”

This, of course, is the root of the problem. That his true victory over her is not through force or violence, but of her own vulnerability. Everything else in this damned world he’d gladly take with blood on his wicked hands. But not her. Never her. He wants her freely or not at all.

Or: a version of freedom. One that works for him. A sort that was more mirage than truth—like a map carelessly copied too many times until it’s mountains and rivers were unrecognizable.

“Please,” she whispers, the sting in her scalp receding instantly. 

“Please what?”

“Aleksander,” she flushes, his name both precious and sharp in her mouth. “Please fuck your wife.”

He’s smiling as he kisses her, pushing aside his correspondence to make room for her on his desk. The wood is unforgiving, unlike the mattress behind him. Alina does not know if she deserves comfort, after all she’s done, all she cast aside. She gathers up her skirts anyways, because she is a selfish creature at heart, parting her legs to allow him between her knees. 

With an amused hum he admires the stockings she’d gone into the trouble of pulling up her thighs; quickly tugging down the lace and licking at exposed skin, mouth unbearably hot. Her whimpers are not enough—he grabs her ankles in one large hand, folding them up near her ears as she whines at the stretch, all to give himself better access to her centre.

The candlelight in the room flickers each time she moans; her husband was a ruthless man and sex was hardly different than a battlefield to him. He liked to play until she begged for mercy, until he eked out every last drop of submission, especially when it was forced by his fingers inside of her cunt.

“You look so pretty like this,” he noses her clit, the two fingers buried inside of her relentless. “Are you going to come for me, my Alina?”

She squeezes her eyes shut on the next stroke, sparks taking flight to the ceiling, casting a soft yellow glow above their heads. Power slipped through the teather, reverberating between them until it was a shimmering wave she could not control. 

“My little sun,” he licks across her puffy clit; she cracks an eye open to see him staring back from where he knelt, eyes dark and knowing, like the stag at the edge of the wood from her childhood, like the stag when it’s throat had been cut to make her his weapon. “My little wife.” _Your little prisoner_ , Alina adds silently.

No pew, no holy book. Aleksander was on his knees—his own way of praying to Sankta Alina, she supposed. The Darkling owed her this if nothing else: Ravka feared his tight yoke. Alina was the balm between the two that ensured his rule.

The least he could do was make her come.

  
  


* * *

If the Cavalry officer is bewildered at his early dismissal, he does not say so, merely grabbing his hat and papers before bidding them both a goodbye, escorted out by two guards who seem to be familiar enough with the taste of Darkling’s brimming rage that they do not chance returning. 

When the doors close and the footsteps fade, Alina stirs her tea instead of breaking the silence. His mouth is pressed into a hard line.

“Glare any harder and you’ll turn into dust,” she sips the fragrant liquid, wishing she’d had the forethought to add more sugar. The palace cooks always kept his personal samovar brewed darker than the rest to suit his taste for strong tea. She didn’t know why—he always dumped sugar in it anyway. 

“You’d enjoy that, of course.”

“Keep you in a little purse, tout you around, try not to sneeze in it. Yes, there’s a certain appeal.” Alina taps a finger on the table. “Out with whatever you really want to say.”

“I told you I didn’t want to give up the southern port tariffs. They’re essential.”

“The Kerch can’t pay. They’ll go to Shu territory and lug it through the mountains, lose half the stock to raiders.”

“The coiffers will not last forever without taxation.”

“Then we sell the palace,” she leans back in her chair, determined to study him as well as he studied her. “Get a hovel in the city and conduct business from there. I’ll knit you a sweater to ward off the winter cold.”

He reaches out and she does not dare flinch; his hand settles at her collar, where he so often ran his fingertips over the smooth points, like he was making sure the weave of the fabrikator still held. It is a slow stroke, almost lazy, entirely possessive. It is a reminder, made especially for her.

“My Alinochka,” he sighs, almost fond. “And what will you give me in return?”

It would have hurt, a lifetime ago, to hear him ask this when she has already given him so much. Instead, she has become shamefully accustomed to the game: looks up at him almost demurely from under her lashes like she is only a young girl again, biting her lip. Letting her heart skitter.

Because the truth is this: if the Ravkan people believe the story that she is trapped in a gilded palace with a monster, it is only a half-lie. Because if she is, it is Alina alone who has the key. 

“Anything you want, Aleksander,” she lies. 

Alina is ready for the next part: when he abruptly stands and drags her with him like a tide, kissing her roughly once before bending her over the table at the waist. He keeps one hand on her neck, a pulse from the bond making her moan as he pulls down her pants to her knees. The hands on her are fast and rough and confident—they are the hands of someone who thinks he has won. 

“You,” he punctuates with a slap across the curve of her ass, “are never going to behave, are you?”

“ _No_ ,” she bites out quickly, feeling something velvet and warm urgently prod her entrance. She’s wet enough between her thighs that her protests are not quite believable. 

“That’s alright,” he mutters, moving, moving forward even as she whimpers, his cock slowly, snugly fitting inside her body, everything lit up, everything eclipsed. “I prefer this. Fucking the defiance out of your little cunt,” his hips meet her backside, and Alina is barely breathing, stuffed so full, nails splitting the wood of the table. She is used to it; knows how she’ll ache for days and try not to enjoy each bruise of his claim. 

“Wait,” she bleats weakly, fluttering around him as he bottoms out—

“No— _take_ it. The only word I want to hear out of that pretty mouth is my _name_ , Alina,” he snarls, anger blackening the room despite the midday hour. “So everyone knows who owns you, knows who you spread your legs for, hm? So they know who grants you mercy.”

She shakes her head, mewling _Aleksander_ as he thrusts, the slap of skin on skin echoing off the walls. Soft cries burble out before she can muffle them into her palm, but he yanks at the collar again until she’s forced to follow the movement, ragged panting as her spine arcs. She can feel her skin bleeding light, a hazy, glowing aura the harder he shoves into her. 

They are ricocheting. Alina has searched the library but still does not know the word for how you could hate someone you loved in the dark. 

It took her time to see, but Alina has given up so little, and Aleksander has sacrificed everything in return. An entire kingdom, a golden crown, and all she had to do was let go of the past and let him in her cunt. 

“Don’t come,” he grunts in her ear when her whimpers get higher, more desperate. “Don’t you dare.”

There are teeth in her shoulder, old injury flaring with pain as he bites down when he comes, shuddering, pulling her to his chest and squeezing like he might keep her there forever. After, they lie on the table, a mess of damp limbs as he shivers with relief, his spend dripping warm down her thighs.

Beneath them is a map. Alina’s fingernail traces the words Os Alta over and over until Aleksander coaxes her up and refastens her trousers, smooths her hair, the mess of him still inside her. He kisses her forehead as she clings to him, sniffling. It is devastating. 

The pieces on the chessboard reset.

* * *

Her hands are around his neck in a pale imitation of her first amplifier. 

“I want a throne,” she squeezes her fingers. It is fascinating how glazed his eyes become as she rides him. Sinking, grinding her hips, shallow and then deep, watching him tense and try to endure it. 

“You have it,” Aleksander is gritting his teeth, brows pinched at the slow pace. His hair is a mess where she’s pulled it. He is trying not to whimper. She wonders why he still bothers with attempts to hide things from her.

“I want more,” she brushes her mouth against his, allows him feel the bare scrape of teeth. 

* * *

  
  


There are two things she discovers about her husband early on. One: that he had a sweet tooth kept under lock and key, denying it whatsoever (she had caught him more than once with black currant pastries shoved in his mouth when he thought no one was looking) and two: that he had great and terrible nightmares, and he had them often.

The Darkling had the stoicism of a hunting predator; he never raised his voice, preferring little barbs with which to strike killing blows. Thus, Alina’s jerked out of sleep on her new, still-unfamiliar bed, instantly knowing that the source of the sound that had rudely awoken her in the middle of the night was coming from his bedroom—a room, which she had discovered (to her embarrassment) she shared a door with in the royal suite. 

She’s fairly sure there’s still a dent in the wall where she’d aimed a teacup at his head—he’d burst through the door one of those first nights after the coronation. He’d been holding more trade missives to discusss, taking her by surprise at the late hour; her nightgown had felt entirely too sheer as he swore loudly and ducked the rouge fine china. 

For a moment she wonders if the commotion tonight is an assassin, come to end him for good—in which case she’d roll over and go back to sleep, thank you very much—but curiosity gets the better of her when the noise continues. Soon she’s padding over in her nightgown, calling upon her power to light her path with a buttery wash of color.

Opening the door, Alina clears her throat hoping to scare off any monsters besides her husband; casting a constellation on the ceiling so she can take stock of the situation. But he’s as expected: alone, in bed, thrashing beneath the covers, hair plastered to his face with sweat and murmuring nonsense in a steady rhythm. 

Alina tip-toes to the edge of the bed calling his name, wishing she had a long stick to poke him with when it becomes apparent he won’t be brought to consciousness on his own.

“Wake up,” she tries, voice rough, gingerly tugging at his shirt, eventually forced to grab his entire shoulder to give it a shake. “Wake up. You’re dreaming—it’s a _dream_ , Aleksander.”

With a shout, Alina is snatched from the floor and pinned beneath the Darkling in an instant, his eyes wild, bright streaks of fear on his handsome face. 

“ _You_ ,” he gasps, taking in great gulps of air, recognition dawning across his features. For a moment he looks like that lost little boy again, the one who looked like he was drowning. The one she got glimpses of on occasions like this, in the liminal spaces between her light and his shadow where he could not hide, even from himself.

She pushes ineffectually beneath his weight with a grunt. “You were having a nightmare. Yelling. I woke you up, because you woke me up, you great oaf.”

To her surprise, he only leans down, content to curl himself around her, pressing his face into the junction of her neck like a child who needed comfort might. Carefully—not sensing a trap—Alina wraps her arms around him as best she can, afraid to hold too tight.

“You pushed the darkness too far, didn’t you?” She whispers, already knowing the answer as shadows creep in on the ceiling, eating little pin-pricks of her light, watching them wink out one-by-one. Soon she’d need to cast for more, or they’d be alone with the dark. “It took something from you that you can’t get back.”

The Darkling doesn’t answer. He must figure he gains nothing by telling the truth. Alina sighs, wiggling under the cage of his body until they’re lying side by side, one of his white-knuckled hands clutched in her nightgown.

“I’ll stay,” she says, peering at his beseeching, lost eyes, mostly because they both know he won’t ask for forgiveness or retribution or help—because he’d rather die than stop playing the game. “I’ll stay until the sun comes up.”

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Wow I love them
> 
> @thevuaslog on twitter


End file.
